Licensing Question
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I recently had a run-in with someone outside of CP who tried to use the permissiveness of the Eclipse license to rip off ToDoList[^]. Now I accept that this person may have been legally entitled to do so, but from an ethical perspective it was way below the belt. Is there an alternative CP license that could better protect my product from such people whilst at the same time keeping the source open? I have considered the possibility of not sharing all the source/binaries on CP (ie. exe but not dlls) but I'd like to avoid a solution that just makes more work for me.
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I recently had a run-in with someone outside of CP who tried to use the permissiveness of the Eclipse license to rip off ToDoList[^]. Now I accept that this person may have been legally entitled to do so, but from an ethical perspective it was way below the belt. Is there an alternative CP license that could better protect my product from such people whilst at the same time keeping the source open? I have considered the possibility of not sharing all the source/binaries on CP (ie. exe but not dlls) but I'd like to avoid a solution that just makes more work for me.
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Thx Chris. What happened was they put their own binary wrapper around ToDoList which was okay so far as it went. But it also caused problems for the operation of ToDoList, and so I asked to have my software removed from their site. They refused and denied there was a problem, which there clearly was. I responded by saying that the reputation of my software was being damaged, so they rebranded and renamed my software and re-released it. Legal perhaps but highly unethical. FWIW I was using the Eclipse Public License that may have been too permissive. If you believe that the CPOL will serve me better I will gladly switch.
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Thx Chris. What happened was they put their own binary wrapper around ToDoList which was okay so far as it went. But it also caused problems for the operation of ToDoList, and so I asked to have my software removed from their site. They refused and denied there was a problem, which there clearly was. I responded by saying that the reputation of my software was being damaged, so they rebranded and renamed my software and re-released it. Legal perhaps but highly unethical. FWIW I was using the Eclipse Public License that may have been too permissive. If you believe that the CPOL will serve me better I will gladly switch.
The CPOL states in section 5 "You agree not to ...imply that this Work is a product of Your own". Unfortunately I can't advise you on what legal agreement works best for you - only you or your legal advisor can do that. While a license may allow someone to do an action, there are moral concerns that really should have been taken into account. What happened just seems...low.
cheers Chris Maunder
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The CPOL states in section 5 "You agree not to ...imply that this Work is a product of Your own". Unfortunately I can't advise you on what legal agreement works best for you - only you or your legal advisor can do that. While a license may allow someone to do an action, there are moral concerns that really should have been taken into account. What happened just seems...low.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Thx Chris. FWIW, it looks like the best license for me would actually be 'Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs' (CC BY-ND). Would that be acceptable to CP?
As long as you allow others to see and use your code, any license is good. I've added CC BY-ND 3.0 but I have a real concern about the "no derivatives" part. Do you really not want people extending your work, or is it that you don't want people: 1. Extending your work and claiming it for their own 2. Extending your work and breaking it 3. Extending your work and taking it in directions you're not keen on
cheers Chris Maunder
